The Broke Student's Cupboard Feast

Okay. So, admittedly "feast" might be taking this dish one step (or a leap) too far... but it is an invaluable cupboard scraping meal. As it's based on a Nigella "recipe" (the Exhausted Mother's tea-time special from her "Bites" series) you know it's gotta be good! (I would post a link, but apparently it's not deemed a real recipe and the internet doesn't have a copy yet?)

It's a sort of rice/lentil pasta sauce soup... Nigella tells you to simply bring a jar of pasta sauce and a jar of water to the boil before stirring in a handful of rice, cooking for 10 (ish) minutes and serving to small children with a lump of Parmesan nearly the size of their heads to grate over.

My "ingredient" list is a little more extensive, but the basic premise is the same. I added lentils for protein, and frozen spinach for greens thus making it an *almost* balanced meal...

As with my last post - you need to make sure that you use a pasta sauce you like, as it is the dominant flavour - but other than that go nuts with whatever you have in your cupboard/fridge/freezer...

eg: chick peas, broccoli, pasta, un-veggie-ise it with some chopped ham... or veganise it and leave off the cheese...

The beauty of this dish was that I could not go to the supermarket for almost three weeks (not something I recommend!) and still manage to put a tasty meal on the table... Score 1 for Kat!

Eggs Poached in Marinara Sauce

I'm feeling guilty. For being a bad, naughty not-blogging bloger-er...

I'm at home for the summer/(hopefully) next six months now - but I still have some student goodies to pass on to y'all when I can be bothered... :)

Because, it's not as if I being doing nothing since I left you all with Taste and Create in November... I've been doing all sorts of things!

• reading other people's blogs...
• job hunting, wildly unsuccessfully... anybody looking for a Kat to join their work force out there? I'm a nice person, I promise!
• being entirely too successful with a sourdough bug
• organising my 21st Birthday Party (my actual Birthday falls on a Wednesday this year = not so good for parties...)
• sitting my "summer" paper - I've got a 10/12 average thus far - go me! :)
• trying to convince my boyfriend that catching up with me might actually be fun (varying success on that one...)
• moving and stacking firewood (I tell you, when I grow-up-and-get-rich-and-have-six-houses they will ALL have gas fires! No more bloody fire wood for me!)
• not tidying my room...

See? Lots of things! Just... not blogging.

Fear not! I have for you a revolutionary recipe taken direct from Katie the College Culinarian (she's one of my favourites): Eggs Poached in Marinara Sauce!

This recipe, if, indeed one can really call it a recipe, is so simple, delicious and wonderful that you'll wonder to yourself "...and I didn't come up with this all by myself because...?!" and then you will cook it twice in one week. At least, that's what I did.

The first time I "made" my own marinara sauce - the second time (as photographed here) I used shop-bought sauce but threw in some peas and spinach for greens. Any good, shop bought, tomato based sauce that you can stand eating fairly unadorned would work here... I served it all over pasta to ensure that Master Joshee was able to have his fill.

There is an egg in there, see?

As you may have guessed by the "cook[ed] it twice in one week" this will fast become a staple!